How do you study an hour-long seminar/talk?

[Genecks]

So, I've come to consider that there may be times I'm required to go to talks, seminars, you know... those things that can last about an hour. Some guy stands up, talks about his research, shows a bunch of data, and the professor expects me to remember a good chunk of it for the next exam.

 

I've been to a couple, but it has never been requested of me to do such for an exam (sucks the fun out of them). As of late, it has been. The talk is over, but I still can't help but feel that I could have done better. There is the simple fact that I've never been taught once how to go to one of these things and prepare to digest and study them. At best, I could look up the professor, but I couldn't figure out what his talk was about. The title was very misleading after the talk was done (in my opinion).

 

So, here are some of the issues I had:

 

1) I couldn't really keep up with the guy explaining his data

2) I couldn't make sense of his graphs and he went through them quite quickly (he didn't explain the terms)

3) The data he did show was from research works, but only the authors and years were given: No titles were given.

4) I can't recall a lot of what he discussed

 

I asked the guy if I could have a copy of the slides after it was all said and done, and he told me he wasn't willing because he supposedly had trouble with animal rights groups the last time gave up his slides to people. I guess I could see that since his research seemed somewhat not really brand new.

 

Still, I'm not sure how I will do with the questions on the exam in relation to this seminar. I'm somewhat pissed about the entire ordeal. I didn't really have a decent way to prime myself, and I really don't quite remember what some of the main things out of the talk were. I can't tell if I have a memory deficit or if it's just normal to go to a seminar and not really recall half of what some guy just talked about.

 

What do you guys think about that recall aspect?

 

Any information about past seminar/talk experiences you have and how you handled digesting their material would be great. I'm not sure sure what to think about this stuff.

[cypher222]

Well honestly he is a poor teacher, besides his research. My opion the 80/20 rule applies. Personally I would be up front to him, and call him out. Your paying for it to be educated I assume. Alot of times people being called out for blunt truth, may offend them at first but you see a slight change afterwards. Realizing what angered them knowing the other person was right. If it affects your money in anyway specially time itself which is more valuable than money I would be pissed. Just think of your time and money, which is a investment on your part.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, you could take a voice recorder and ask for a copy of his powerpoint. There's also taking notes, but they're not teaching a class so they're not going to pause for you to write down notes. If you know what the seminar is about, maybe briefly study the subject so you're more familiar with it. But really there's no good solution.

[ajb]

Typically it is difficult to get any details from a seminar talk. In part a seminar is not the place to present details anyway. Seminars are really the place to give an overall feel to ones work, a bit like an advert for a paper or research program.

 

The best one can do is write down the speakers name, the institute he is with and then the references that that the talk is based on. Form that you should be able to find enough information to "fill in the gaps" of the talk if desired. Making notes at the time can be very difficult and distracting.

 

You can often learn more by talking to the speaker after, say at the pub!

Edited October 14, 2010 by ajb

[CharonY]

The format is not comparable to a lecture and there are essentially only a few main points that one should try to remember.

Though I can see that for someone not familiar in the topic and/or being a student it is hard to figure out what the main points were. And sometimes the talks are so bad that actually no one is able to figure it out.

 

In short, write down who the guy was, what the topic is,write down key references (knowing the topic should be sufficient in many cases to track them down even if only name and years are given). You will likely encounter parts that you do not understand (yet), do not fret, but make a short note and try to follow the rest of the talk. The conclusion slide is where you should pay a lot of attention.

 

Do not try to make note of everything. It will keep you from listening. And again, the key is to find the main arguments, the data is just to justify the conclusions.

[Genecks]

Good advice all around.

 

Do any of you think I would anger and annoy a presenter if I brought a digital camera and started taking pictures of the presentation? Let's assume I don't use the flash. I suspect if the presenter were to tell people not take pictures, then I wouldn't. But I think taking quick pictures would be an excellent way to capture graphs and various data.

 

@cypher222:

Interestingly, when we held class again, the professor (she) said it wouldn't be fair to exam us on the material of the speech. Curious situation, really.

Edited October 16, 2010 by Genecks

[Mr Skeptic]

You'd certainly look weird doing that (unless there were physical objects rather than projection). I think that if the presenter doesn't want to share his slides then he probably wouldn't appreciate you taking pictures, whether or not he says anything. As for flash, if you took pictures of a projection with flash, you'd be pretty disappointed.

[CharonY]

Also, from the viewpoint of the presenter it appears that you are not going to make an effort to understand his/her points, but are just going to collect data instead.

[Genecks]

Also, from the viewpoint of the presenter it appears that you are not going to make an effort to understand his/her points, but are just going to collect data instead.

 

I'm somewhat surprised that you're saying this.

 

Isn't one of the main points to "collect data" to become informed? To have ways to encode that data in the brain?

 

I suspect if someone was taking pictures of me and my data during a speech, either the person was trying to collect data (maybe he/she needs to write a report or better understand my data via review of what I presented as it may be relevant to that person's interests or goals) or else the person is interested in stealing my unpublished research.

Edited October 20, 2010 by Genecks

[CharonY]

No, science is rarely about the data, but the hypotheses that explains them. A talk is always about a story, e.g. a problem and how it was solved or a question and the answer. The data is just to support the claim (and refute alternative hypotheses).

Pure data collection results in data dumps generally of little value (with few exceptions).